When Anakin Skywalker gave his life to save Luke on the Death Star, he returned to the light for one final moment. Luke saw his father’s true face and spirit before he passed, but Leia never had that chance. Only shortly before his death did Anakin even realize Leia was his daughter. Afterward, as a redeemed Jedi, he reached out to her as a Force ghost. What followed in the Legends timeline painted one of the most painful, complex stories in the Skywalker family.
The First Encounter At Bakura
After the victory at Endor, Leia experienced something that would stay with her for years. An apparition of Anakin appeared before her, no longer the armored figure she hated, but the spirit of her father. He asked for forgiveness. She refused. In her eyes, Vader could not undo Alderaan or erase what he had done to the galaxy.
The memory stayed with her. In Tatooine Ghost novel, the moment is recalled clearly:
“It had a similar feel to the Force-vision she had experienced nearly five years earlier at Bakura, when her father had sent an apparition begging for the forgiveness she would never—could never—grant.”
That first meeting set the tone. Leia held her ground and shut him out.
Leia’s Struggle Years Later
Years after Bakura, Leia was still resisting. In Tatooine Ghost, she spoke with Luke over a holo call. He tried to guide her through what the Force was showing, but she saw it as another attempt to make her forgive Anakin.
“You mean forgive him.”
Luke stayed calm:
“I mean trust what you find. Leia, the Force isn’t anyone’s servant. The presence you’re feeling has nothing to do with me or our father. If the Force is acting on you, it’s responding to you.”
Leia pushed back:
“That’s not possible. I’m no Jedi.”
Luke warned her about anger and fear. Leia’s answer made her stance sharp again:
“Anyone living,” she corrected. “Darth Vader doesn’t count.”
Even years later, her response to her father’s spirit remained rejection.
Facing The Legacy On Tatooine
While traveling across Tatooine, Leia saw the scars of Anakin’s choices. She thought about Shmi’s suffering and the massacre of the Tuskens. Standing in that place, the full scale of his actions hit her:
“Leia could not bear to look longer. As horrified as she was by what Shmi had suffered—as much as it pained her to contemplate what had happened there—she was even more appalled by the ghastly cycle her father had set in motion. There had to be a hundred skulls in that pile, maybe two or three hundred. For his mother’s life, Anakin had taken the lives of dozens of Tuskens; the Sand People had responded with more killing of their own. The legacy of death he had planted that day had continued to grow, costing hundreds of beings their lives, and Leia could see no end to it.”
The past was heavy, and she carried it with her.
Han’s View
Han gave her a different way to look at it. His words did not excuse Anakin, but they pulled focus back to the boy who had lost his mother.
“He was a kid with a dead mother. He vented his anger on the ones who killed her. I might have done the same thing.”
Leia answered right away:
“That doesn’t make it right.”
Han pushed further:
“And it doesn’t make me a Sith monster, either. What he did wasn’t evil, it was human. Later, he became Darth Vader and did a lot of terrible things, but don’t forget that he’s the one who killed the Emperor.”
Leia asked directly:
“You’re saying you forgive him? … You’re saying Darth Vader saved the galaxy?”
Han made his point plain:
“Well, Anakin Skywalker. Think about it. If he’d have been a nice guy, do you think he’d have ever gotten that close to Palpatine? … Maybe that was your father’s destiny all along, to save the galaxy just like his mother thought he would—well, maybe not just like she thought. But he did save it.”
His words left Leia thoughtful, even shaken, but they stayed with her.
Kitster’s Story And Leia’s Reflection
When Leia sat down with Kitster, Anakin’s childhood friend, the talk turned to what had happened after Shmi’s death. Kitster didn’t excuse anything, but he wanted her to know something important.
“Your father was a Jedi. What he did was wrong. Quite possibly, it set him on the dark road he took later in life… and even he was sorry for his mistake.”
Leia frowned and asked how Kitster could know that. Kitster explained what he had learned from Beru Lars. After Shmi’s burial, Anakin spoke to her grave.
“Anakin spoke to her grave, saying he had not been strong enough to save her, but promising he would not fail again.”
Leia’s reaction was skeptical.
“‘Fail again?’ Leia asked. ‘But his mother was already dead. How was he going to undo that?’”
Kitster admitted that it puzzled him too. He asked Beru about it, and she had told him Anakin repeated himself twice—that he was not strong enough.
“Once that he was not strong enough to save his mother, and the second time just that he was not strong enough. I thought at the time that he had just repeated himself, but now I’m not so sure. After being at the oasis, I think maybe Anakin realized what a terrible mistake he had made. I think he knew how he had failed as a Jedi.”
Leia’s reply was softer than before:
“‘Maybe,’ Leia said. ‘It would be nice to believe that. I’d like to.’”
Kitster reassured her with his own memory of the boy he knew:
“The boy I knew would have been sorry for what he had done, and even ten years away would not have changed that. He was still his mother’s son.”
At that moment, Chewbacca’s voice interrupted over the comm. Leia closed the conversation with gratitude:
“‘That’s our signal. Thank you, Kitster.’ She slapped the launch activator. ‘May the Force be with you.’”
Once the hatch sealed, the words stayed with her. The text closes with Leia’s reflection as the Falcon detached:
“Of course, she would never really know how her father had felt about what had happened at the oasis—or even if he had truly said what Kitster reported. But it did seem possible, and that was enough for now.”
With that, Leia finally let herself accept that Anakin Skywalker had once been more than the shadow of Darth Vader.